Let’s make one long shot guess that one Ken (McIntosh) supplants another (K9) and shocks us with his productivity. One thing that K9 did poorly almost his entire time in Seattle was taking the yards that were there, even when that meant minimizing negatives. Yes, his dynamism ate up the Pats in Q3 of the SB and that proved relatively decisive, though Seattle’s D really was the star of the show. So if Kenny rather than Ken could be 7/8’s as quick as Walker (McIntosh IS really good when healthy), maybe we have something unexpected. There was a lot of hand-wringing over losing Walker, but I think in the long run we’ll know that Ken is good but not Barry Sanders or Barkley.
One other factor that will really be tested this next season is depth. They’ll try to lean on their system, as all teams do, and that’s been the supposed genius of McDonald, but you can only take raw talent so far. McDonald has proven he deserves some slack in trusting his system and “his guys,” but that’s always great until your depth gets thin. SF this past season is really exhibit A. Shanahan is a very good offensive coach, but you can’t do squat if your 11 dudes are mostly backups. We actually saw that in McDonald’s first season; his system didn’t matter because the talent gap was obvious.
And then there’s the fact that they play in the toughest division already and the Rams’ just pushed all their chips forward on a really strong secondary. Now you have to beat the kind of secondary New England has — And the Rams already have a pretty tough front. You really want Arroyo and Horton to be legit options… And don’t forget Seattle will have one of the roughest schedules for sure. Maybe you get a lucky break with hurt QBs and regressions (see this past season with the Colts and the Commanders), but still….
I think the main problem with the reduction in viewers for the NBL is that they decided to go all in on political messaging. Once a sporting code goes there, the viewership declines. A perfect example was the kneeling incident for the NFL. Viewership declined after that for a while. You’d think these corporate morons would wake up to this, but they still push it. The NFL nearly shot themselves in the foot recently with the whole BLM thing recently. It seems they’ve backed off that now, thank goodness.
Stick to what you know and do best sports people!!
There is a responsibility to be on the right side of history if we have influence and some semblance of power, however. It does take proper balance though. The league has kept the small printed messages on the helmets and in stadiums that serve as subtle reminders, just as soccer has around the world. I think if it's not being force-fed, it is a more effective message, anyway. There is a happy medium between individual liberties and protecting corporate profits that I am excited to see. If it becomes "shut up and dribble", that is a problem also.
It depends on whether you’re correct in your decision of which side of history you consider ‘right’ at the time. You could well have egg on your face over time. Better to stay out of it IMO.
Freedom. Yeah, sometimes... for some folks. The arc towards "freedom" is more of a historical roller-coaster then an "arc". At ANY point in history, somewhere folks are screaming (and dreaming) to be free.
My social conscience is as high as anyone else's. Still, I come to sports for a "time out" from the depressing, omnipresent, soul-crushing problems of our social, political, and religious turmoil. I don't even like to talk to people who agree with me, except, you know, Go 'Hawks!!
I wasn't positive that Tim Allen was alive, let alone has a top ranked sitcom today. But top ranked doesn't mean what it used to when there were 4 networks. The TV landscape is forever changed (and changing). As a kid I think most of the country tuned in to the final episode of MASH and watched to find out who shot JR Ewing. Most everyone around the water cooler had seen Johnny Carson the night before, and now fewer than 6 people in 1,000 watch the most-watched late night show. While I want to be sad about this, I can remember how much absolute crap TV used to get green-lit and aired.
Recently I signed up for a free trial of YouTube TV to watch the Super Bowl and kept it for a month. Maybe I didn't find everything it had to offer but for my money it seemed like a cross between basic cable and a free streaming service like Pluto that has some ad-inclusive channels showing reruns of just one program. This delighted Mrs Turtleman since we could watch every Dateline we had missed since cutting cable a decade earlier, but outside of getting to re-watch the Super Bowl I didn't find it remotely worth the subscription price. Maybe I'm turning into a boomer, but it seems awfully expensive to have ads. Or at least to be so ad heavy.
Entertainment is a tough business. I used to love going to the theater to see a movie. Not counting taking a kid to see Barbie, the last time I went to the movies for myself was Hereditary -over 6 years ago! I just don't get excited about remakes and sequels and the biggest movies usually seem to be one or the other. The NFL probably has me for life, but I've pruned my sports tree greatly from my younger days. I don't remember the last MLB game I watched that wasn't a World Series. I want to be excited that the Sonics appear to be returning, but the NBA product has lost me. Even college hoops aren't the same as so many star players are one and done. I watch more college football to see prospects than out of any rooting interest.
This take is probably more reflective of gen X than of younger people. By no means do I long for the "good ol' days" though. Except for basketball, programming is objectively better having the number of choices we do. HBO (or Netflix) alone has better original programming than all 3-4 networks combined did each year. It's just odd that outside of Tiger King during Covid nobody seems to watch the same things.
I got very sidetracked by the opening of this newsletter! As for the answer to last NFC repeat, I was pretty sure it was either the Cowboys or 49ers from back in the 90s. The author of the list of things that must happen to repeat must be a wise man. Avoiding injury is definitely #1. Perhaps I'll be proven wrong, but I'm also much more worried about one bad game than I am regression. The INT at the 1 yard line confused me though. At least the part at the end. Rams, 49ers each 3 times?
As far as being successful next season, the one thing I fear is injuries. You can’t control who gets them and how severe they are.
I have the utmost confidence in our coaching staff, front office and players. If the team avoids major injuries to key players, they will be in the hunt to win it all.
I don't know diddle about what I'm talking about here, but I wonder if one style of play may have either more or less chance of injury than another? I totally get that if you're on the bench you probably won't pull a hammy, but I wonder if more guys are injured on short, crossing passing plays vs. injured on inside running plays. What can the O&D coordinators do to reduce the chance of injuries?
Interesting point. Not sure if, or how, potential injury may influence a game plan. I think the safest play is where Sam takes a knee to end the game. That play should be in every game plan right?
MM excels in minimizing jnjury by insisting every position is "shared". If you aren't playing at 100%, he sits you until you are fully healthy. Many teams will play a man at 80% until he physically can't continue and they lose them for weeks, if not the season.
I was thinking about what could trip us up, now that FA is largely behind us -- something you already addressed a few newsletters ago:
1. We miss K9 in the backfield too much. The counter to that is our OL steadily improved through the year and was quite strong if not dominant in the playoffs. So if that improvement carries over, maybe a "lesser" RB gets it done
2. Shahid doesn't earn his big contract. But we have Tory Horton and hopefully a healthy Arroyo adds some wrinkles
3. Opposing offenses start figuring out MacDonald's Rubiks Cube. Could argue McVay already has, w/Rams putting up near 500 yds/game or more, twice, and Nacua going nuts in our secondary -- and maybe the Bucs too. But we won or could have won all those games
4. Injuries. Saw somewhere we had the 4th fewest salary-adjusted lost snaps
Injuries feels like the only variable somewhat out of our control. I say "somewhat" because with the depth we have, MacDonald can rest an injured player an extra week and not make it worse.
Is this really the case? If so, is reason to be optimistic.
Seems harder to believe that there are 2 teams with an older roster. At least starting roster. I guess the difference between oldest and youngest is just a couple of years after averaging in all 53.
All three within a year of each other: Washington 28.2, Pitt 27.8, SF 27.3. Actually now that I look at it the entire league is basically clustered between 28 and and 26
We have MM running the show. I think one thing you can control is bringing out the best in players. You’re right about injuries. We can’t repeat if Darnold, JSN and Murphy (etc) suffer major injuries, but we can maintain the same single mined focus and effort from the players and I believe the coaches and team leaders are the ones who can set that tone and bring back that focus and effort. It was there in OTAs last year with 100% attendance in non mandatory practices. And it was there all season. The same leaders will be there this year, the same coaches. Andy Reid and Bill Belichick set the tone, and those teams had players who set the examples. It can be done! We have a very solid shot at it.
With a long season awash with countless variables it's a brain boggler to predict what can befall any given team along the way. Injuries are 'really' hard to predict and in this sport they ARE going to happen. Luck favors the prepared however and depth matters. No matter how talented the 'starters' are, me (and MM?) think a 70 man team has the edge over a 53 man team. "Next man up" has served us well thus far.
MacDonald owned some of our losses last year, saying it was his defensive play-calling that failed the effort. This gives me a clue to how important a DC's timely adjustments must be, making it most important how changing DCs have on win/loss outcomes from year-to-year. Our kicker can win games when the opponent can't score points, thus minimizing our OC's performance requirements. I fully expext Sam and Co. will now make life easier for our Defense by running up our scoring.
tbh I've been tired of how Seahawks fans treat 2014.
If you are only happy when your team wins it all you're setting yourself up for misery and you're missing the point: to be entertained and have fun. If you are attached to a specific outcome you're going to be miserable and angry--also, possibly, mean. There are, you know, whole religions based around recognizing how bad that is for you and trying to move away from that way of looking at things.
Instead, why not enjoy how incredibly fun and exciting that season was and how awesome it was to have our team come that close to one of the biggest achievements in all of sports?!
The former attitude is what makes a lot of other fans and a lot of other sports media besides SSJ tedious and annoying to me. I would have quit watching football if I'd maintained the former attitude because it wouldn't have been worth it. Instead I enjoy football whether my team wins or loses (though *more* if they win)!
This may not be a popular opinion, but I got over the Super Bowl loss very quickly. Of course it was disappointing and I'm not gonna say Seattle was playing with house money, but to have won a Super Bowl already and accomplished everything they did just to get that close to another one, I wasn't crushed by it. I was actually way more crushed by the loss to the Falcons in 2012.
It's not whether you win or lose. It's how you play the game.
So goes the saying of my childhood. As a sports fan winning isn't everything but man it can be disheartening if it feels like the team isn't even trying.
And boy it's a good time to be a Seattle area pro sports fan. Seahawks, Mariners, Sounders, Storm, Kraken, the list goes on. Not all winning but all competing. And I have to imagine if we get our NBA franchise back it will come with a motivated owner.
Saw just now that NFL.com's latest power ranking has Seattle at #1, Rams at #2 and Niners at #5.
Is there any debate about the strongest division in football? If we come out of there as division champs they should just hand us the Lombardi
Let’s make one long shot guess that one Ken (McIntosh) supplants another (K9) and shocks us with his productivity. One thing that K9 did poorly almost his entire time in Seattle was taking the yards that were there, even when that meant minimizing negatives. Yes, his dynamism ate up the Pats in Q3 of the SB and that proved relatively decisive, though Seattle’s D really was the star of the show. So if Kenny rather than Ken could be 7/8’s as quick as Walker (McIntosh IS really good when healthy), maybe we have something unexpected. There was a lot of hand-wringing over losing Walker, but I think in the long run we’ll know that Ken is good but not Barry Sanders or Barkley.
One other factor that will really be tested this next season is depth. They’ll try to lean on their system, as all teams do, and that’s been the supposed genius of McDonald, but you can only take raw talent so far. McDonald has proven he deserves some slack in trusting his system and “his guys,” but that’s always great until your depth gets thin. SF this past season is really exhibit A. Shanahan is a very good offensive coach, but you can’t do squat if your 11 dudes are mostly backups. We actually saw that in McDonald’s first season; his system didn’t matter because the talent gap was obvious.
And then there’s the fact that they play in the toughest division already and the Rams’ just pushed all their chips forward on a really strong secondary. Now you have to beat the kind of secondary New England has — And the Rams already have a pretty tough front. You really want Arroyo and Horton to be legit options… And don’t forget Seattle will have one of the roughest schedules for sure. Maybe you get a lucky break with hurt QBs and regressions (see this past season with the Colts and the Commanders), but still….
Excellent points, all!
I think the main problem with the reduction in viewers for the NBL is that they decided to go all in on political messaging. Once a sporting code goes there, the viewership declines. A perfect example was the kneeling incident for the NFL. Viewership declined after that for a while. You’d think these corporate morons would wake up to this, but they still push it. The NFL nearly shot themselves in the foot recently with the whole BLM thing recently. It seems they’ve backed off that now, thank goodness.
Stick to what you know and do best sports people!!
There is a responsibility to be on the right side of history if we have influence and some semblance of power, however. It does take proper balance though. The league has kept the small printed messages on the helmets and in stadiums that serve as subtle reminders, just as soccer has around the world. I think if it's not being force-fed, it is a more effective message, anyway. There is a happy medium between individual liberties and protecting corporate profits that I am excited to see. If it becomes "shut up and dribble", that is a problem also.
It depends on whether you’re correct in your decision of which side of history you consider ‘right’ at the time. You could well have egg on your face over time. Better to stay out of it IMO.
The arc of history bends one way, towards freedom.
Freedom. Yeah, sometimes... for some folks. The arc towards "freedom" is more of a historical roller-coaster then an "arc". At ANY point in history, somewhere folks are screaming (and dreaming) to be free.
https://youtube.com/shorts/6VnNUpupAGM?si=xwLeITTvhdllU_ha
AMEN! Politicization sucks the life out of other activities (like sports)
My social conscience is as high as anyone else's. Still, I come to sports for a "time out" from the depressing, omnipresent, soul-crushing problems of our social, political, and religious turmoil. I don't even like to talk to people who agree with me, except, you know, Go 'Hawks!!
Yep. It's my diversion. A much needed distraction when solutions are hard to find. Come back with fresh perspectives.
I wasn't positive that Tim Allen was alive, let alone has a top ranked sitcom today. But top ranked doesn't mean what it used to when there were 4 networks. The TV landscape is forever changed (and changing). As a kid I think most of the country tuned in to the final episode of MASH and watched to find out who shot JR Ewing. Most everyone around the water cooler had seen Johnny Carson the night before, and now fewer than 6 people in 1,000 watch the most-watched late night show. While I want to be sad about this, I can remember how much absolute crap TV used to get green-lit and aired.
Recently I signed up for a free trial of YouTube TV to watch the Super Bowl and kept it for a month. Maybe I didn't find everything it had to offer but for my money it seemed like a cross between basic cable and a free streaming service like Pluto that has some ad-inclusive channels showing reruns of just one program. This delighted Mrs Turtleman since we could watch every Dateline we had missed since cutting cable a decade earlier, but outside of getting to re-watch the Super Bowl I didn't find it remotely worth the subscription price. Maybe I'm turning into a boomer, but it seems awfully expensive to have ads. Or at least to be so ad heavy.
Entertainment is a tough business. I used to love going to the theater to see a movie. Not counting taking a kid to see Barbie, the last time I went to the movies for myself was Hereditary -over 6 years ago! I just don't get excited about remakes and sequels and the biggest movies usually seem to be one or the other. The NFL probably has me for life, but I've pruned my sports tree greatly from my younger days. I don't remember the last MLB game I watched that wasn't a World Series. I want to be excited that the Sonics appear to be returning, but the NBA product has lost me. Even college hoops aren't the same as so many star players are one and done. I watch more college football to see prospects than out of any rooting interest.
This take is probably more reflective of gen X than of younger people. By no means do I long for the "good ol' days" though. Except for basketball, programming is objectively better having the number of choices we do. HBO (or Netflix) alone has better original programming than all 3-4 networks combined did each year. It's just odd that outside of Tiger King during Covid nobody seems to watch the same things.
Remember the original Richard Kimble? Until JR and MASH, the final episode of The Fugitive was the highest rated episode of a regular show.
https://youtu.be/O4V1jL7Uud0?si=iqddG8Nx87tGx3u-
Ah yes, the search for the one-armed man!
I got very sidetracked by the opening of this newsletter! As for the answer to last NFC repeat, I was pretty sure it was either the Cowboys or 49ers from back in the 90s. The author of the list of things that must happen to repeat must be a wise man. Avoiding injury is definitely #1. Perhaps I'll be proven wrong, but I'm also much more worried about one bad game than I am regression. The INT at the 1 yard line confused me though. At least the part at the end. Rams, 49ers each 3 times?
Man. Fun article. Top notch humor:
Memento reference for 2014.
The Tyson smile after the Rams poor 2022 follow up season.
"Don’t throw an interception at the one-yard line (Rams, 49ers, Rams, 49ers, Rams, 49ers)" 😂
Great job, SSJ.
I forgot that he "forgot" earlier about 2014, so I thought he forgot to put us in that list of:
Don’t throw an interception at the one-yard line (Rams, 49ers, Rams, 49ers, Rams, 49ers, *Seahawks?*)
I would throw in an honorable mention of: "Rams, 49ers" too.
As far as being successful next season, the one thing I fear is injuries. You can’t control who gets them and how severe they are.
I have the utmost confidence in our coaching staff, front office and players. If the team avoids major injuries to key players, they will be in the hunt to win it all.
I don't know diddle about what I'm talking about here, but I wonder if one style of play may have either more or less chance of injury than another? I totally get that if you're on the bench you probably won't pull a hammy, but I wonder if more guys are injured on short, crossing passing plays vs. injured on inside running plays. What can the O&D coordinators do to reduce the chance of injuries?
Interesting point. Not sure if, or how, potential injury may influence a game plan. I think the safest play is where Sam takes a knee to end the game. That play should be in every game plan right?
MM excels in minimizing jnjury by insisting every position is "shared". If you aren't playing at 100%, he sits you until you are fully healthy. Many teams will play a man at 80% until he physically can't continue and they lose them for weeks, if not the season.
I was thinking about what could trip us up, now that FA is largely behind us -- something you already addressed a few newsletters ago:
1. We miss K9 in the backfield too much. The counter to that is our OL steadily improved through the year and was quite strong if not dominant in the playoffs. So if that improvement carries over, maybe a "lesser" RB gets it done
2. Shahid doesn't earn his big contract. But we have Tory Horton and hopefully a healthy Arroyo adds some wrinkles
3. Opposing offenses start figuring out MacDonald's Rubiks Cube. Could argue McVay already has, w/Rams putting up near 500 yds/game or more, twice, and Nacua going nuts in our secondary -- and maybe the Bucs too. But we won or could have won all those games
4. Injuries. Saw somewhere we had the 4th fewest salary-adjusted lost snaps
Injuries feels like the only variable somewhat out of our control. I say "somewhat" because with the depth we have, MacDonald can rest an injured player an extra week and not make it worse.
Is this really the case? If so, is reason to be optimistic.
Salary-adjusted lost snaps - cool stat. Niners must have sucked on that, electro-magnetic radiation and all. So sad.
Even with some of their older stars sidelined for multiple games, they were still the NFL's 3rd oldest team. Seattle the 4th youngest
https://ftnfantasy.com/nfl/snap-weighted-age-2025-seahawks-bring-another-young-team-to-a-championship
Seems harder to believe that there are 2 teams with an older roster. At least starting roster. I guess the difference between oldest and youngest is just a couple of years after averaging in all 53.
All three within a year of each other: Washington 28.2, Pitt 27.8, SF 27.3. Actually now that I look at it the entire league is basically clustered between 28 and and 26
Very cool stat, and excellent observation about Whiners….
We have MM running the show. I think one thing you can control is bringing out the best in players. You’re right about injuries. We can’t repeat if Darnold, JSN and Murphy (etc) suffer major injuries, but we can maintain the same single mined focus and effort from the players and I believe the coaches and team leaders are the ones who can set that tone and bring back that focus and effort. It was there in OTAs last year with 100% attendance in non mandatory practices. And it was there all season. The same leaders will be there this year, the same coaches. Andy Reid and Bill Belichick set the tone, and those teams had players who set the examples. It can be done! We have a very solid shot at it.
With a long season awash with countless variables it's a brain boggler to predict what can befall any given team along the way. Injuries are 'really' hard to predict and in this sport they ARE going to happen. Luck favors the prepared however and depth matters. No matter how talented the 'starters' are, me (and MM?) think a 70 man team has the edge over a 53 man team. "Next man up" has served us well thus far.
All those who have had to step up have played well. They certainly are prepared to play when called upon.
MacDonald owned some of our losses last year, saying it was his defensive play-calling that failed the effort. This gives me a clue to how important a DC's timely adjustments must be, making it most important how changing DCs have on win/loss outcomes from year-to-year. Our kicker can win games when the opponent can't score points, thus minimizing our OC's performance requirements. I fully expext Sam and Co. will now make life easier for our Defense by running up our scoring.
tbh I've been tired of how Seahawks fans treat 2014.
If you are only happy when your team wins it all you're setting yourself up for misery and you're missing the point: to be entertained and have fun. If you are attached to a specific outcome you're going to be miserable and angry--also, possibly, mean. There are, you know, whole religions based around recognizing how bad that is for you and trying to move away from that way of looking at things.
Instead, why not enjoy how incredibly fun and exciting that season was and how awesome it was to have our team come that close to one of the biggest achievements in all of sports?!
The former attitude is what makes a lot of other fans and a lot of other sports media besides SSJ tedious and annoying to me. I would have quit watching football if I'd maintained the former attitude because it wouldn't have been worth it. Instead I enjoy football whether my team wins or loses (though *more* if they win)!
This may not be a popular opinion, but I got over the Super Bowl loss very quickly. Of course it was disappointing and I'm not gonna say Seattle was playing with house money, but to have won a Super Bowl already and accomplished everything they did just to get that close to another one, I wasn't crushed by it. I was actually way more crushed by the loss to the Falcons in 2012.
Not surprising to me at all based on what I know about you, Joe! 😀
It's not whether you win or lose. It's how you play the game.
So goes the saying of my childhood. As a sports fan winning isn't everything but man it can be disheartening if it feels like the team isn't even trying.
And boy it's a good time to be a Seattle area pro sports fan. Seahawks, Mariners, Sounders, Storm, Kraken, the list goes on. Not all winning but all competing. And I have to imagine if we get our NBA franchise back it will come with a motivated owner.
Good times